Ultimately, those answers will depend on who goes in the first nine picks — and maybe more specifically, which quarterbacks come off the board early.

This year’s quarterback class is considered good and deep, but not great. The draft overall has several elite prospects (but less than 10, Mayhew said).

Central Florida’s Blake Bortles, Texas A&M’s Johnny Manziel and Louisville’s Teddy Bridgewater are widely considered the top three quarterback prospects, with Fresno State’s David Carr another first-round possibility. But none is near the class of QB Andrew Luck in 2012, and all four fall below the likes of Jadeveon Clowney and Sammy Watkins in terms of sheer talent.

Still, teams picking high in the draft have such a need at the position that a handful of QBs seem destined to go in the first nine picks.

“Are you sure about that, though?” Mayhew said last week at the NFL owners meetings. “I think (if) you said that a month ago, everybody would have signed off on that. But if you say that now, you don’t know how it’s going to go with the quarterbacks.”

As many as six of the teams drafting in the top 10 — Houston (first pick), Jacksonville (third), Cleveland (fourth), Oakland (fifth), Tampa Bay (seventh) and Minnesota (eighth) — have quarterback needs that they could consider addressing in the first round.

That’s similar to recent drafts, where history isn’t a great guide. In 2011, the Lions watched talented defensive tackle Nick Fairley tumble into their laps at No. 13 after a quarterback run sent Cam Newton (first), Jake Locker (eighth), Blaine Gabbert (10th) and Christian Ponder (12th) flying off the board.

Newton is the only member of that group who’s secure in his starting job now, and the Lions thought so little of the class that they cheered in their draft room when the division rival Vikings took Ponder the pick before them.

In 2012, Luck and Robert Griffin III were considered elite quarterback prospects and went Nos. 1-2 overall. And last year, with no consensus top quarterback, every team in the top 10 passed on drafting a passer, and only one —Buffalo’s E.J. Manuel — landed in the first round.

The talent at the top of this year’s draft is more comparable to 2011, when teams regretfully passed on Pro Bowl players such as J.J. Watt and Robert Quinn to take quarterbacks.

Will teams learn from that lesson next month? Mayhew said he’s not sure how things will play out right now.

“I foresee it me sitting and waiting to see what happens but hedging my bets on both ways, where, if they all go, that we’re in good shape, but if they don’t all go, then we’re still in good shape,” he said.